When perusing your company benefits page to tally your number of vacation days, sick days, and personal days (use them all guilt-free, baby—you’ve earned them), you’ll likely notice another type of time off: volunteer days. Paid time off to volunteer is one of the few employee benefits that’s increased in recent years, according to the Harvard Business Review, with two-thirds of companies offering PTO in exchange for doing good. Just like your vacation days, this is your time—and, more importantly, this is time your company is paying you to put towards something outside the office you’re really passionate about. What’s not to love?
Depending on your company’s policy, you might look for day-long volunteer events where you can ditch the office to work for a good cause or you might able to break paid volunteer days up into hourly increments, meaning you could spend one morning a week volunteering your time as a girls running coach or working in a community garden instead of at your desk.
Not sure where to start? Here are nine organizations where you can use your volunteer days in ways you’ll actually look forward to.
1. Girls on the Run
There is no surer way to feel excited about the future of women and girls than by spending a season coaching with Girls on the Run, a non-profit after-school program for 3rd through 5th graders that teaches empowerment through running. (Or, Heart & Sole is Girls on the Run’s sister program for 6th to 8th graders.) If you can split your volunteer days into hourly increments, consider spending a season as a coach helping girls train for a 5k (no running experience necessary). If you’re looking for a smaller time commitment, sign up to cheer girls on or run with a buddy at their big season-ending race.
2. Equal Justice Initiative
The Equal Justice Initiative works to address criminal justice reform, racial justice, and poverty across the country—a big mission with lots of creative ways to get involved. You can host an educational event with your friends or community (think: a screening of the film Just Mercy followed by a guided discussion on the criminal justice system, or hosting a EJI sponsored book club), join the effort to memorialize sites of racial violence in your area as part of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project, or sign up to work with one of EJI’s local community partners to help with hands-on criminal justice reform in your community.
3. Americorps
Americorps is one of the OGs of volunteer opportunities, and it has staying power for good reason: This organization has everything. Virtual volunteer opportunities, human rights causes, animal therapy, elder care, academic interests, homelessness, work with veterans, legal aid. Simply type in your ZIP code and filter by your interests and skills to find the perfect way to donate your time.
4. Project Glimmer
Project Glimmer’s mission is all about fostering confidence in adolescent girls, including those in foster care and experiencing houselessness. They’ve served over 1 million girls nationally—86 percent of whom are girls of color—with programs that focus on giving girls access to role models, career coaching, and support to close the success gap. You can show up with as little as an hour of your time.
5. The Nature Conservancy
There is no better antidote to excessive screen time than some good old-fashioned gardening. Seriously, how good does that sound after your 10th Zoom of the day? The Nature Conservancy offers tons of national volunteer opportunities which range from advocating for environmentally friendly policies at your state legislature, to cleaning up local beaches, to planting trees.
6. Girls Write Now
Mentorship programs are one of the most rewarding ways to use your volunteer hours that will have impacts long after your hours are over. At Girls Write Now, you’ll join a diverse community of mentors and mentees where you’ll get just as much as you give. The writing- and multimedia-based mentor program for high school girls and gender-expansive youth is designed to help the next generation of leaders find their voices. You can also join public events and add your voice to discussions on everything from the power of fan fiction to expressing yourself through songwriting.
7. Red Cross
If you’re the friend people come to in a crisis, put your skills to use with the Red Cross, which offers a huge range of community volunteer opportunities. You can jump in for boots-on-the-ground opportunities as part of a disaster action team, serve in a “client-facing” role, which can include things like helping a family relocate after a natural disaster, or even volunteer your social media skills to help tell Red Cross stories.
8. National Park Service
If you’ve ever dreamt about throwing it all away to live your life off the grid in harmony with nature, consider starting with a volunteer gig for the National Park Service. That could be as simple as a day spent staffing a local visitors’ center and teaching junior rangers about the park, as hands-on as restoring trails in a park that’s been on your bucket list, or as dreamy as serving as a national park’s artist-in-residence. (Yes, that’s a thing.)
9. Step Up
Step Up works with 14- to 23-year-olds who identify as girls and women to help them meet their goals, whether they’re first-generation students applying to college, want help landing an internship, or simply want to build confidence. If you don’t have time to go all-in as a mentor, there are still several ways to use your volunteer hours, including creating a video mentoring session or writing an encouraging letter.
Macaela MacKenzie is a writer and editor specializing in wellness. She writes about self-care, mental health, fertility, and women’s equality with a focus on breaking down stigmas in women’s health.
